To bring out the full impact of this insight, I invite you to take two quick flashbacks through American cultural history with me.



Flashback 1:

The elderly man with the shock of white hair and the goaty beard stumbled back into his car after another rejection, his pale face now flushed red with anger and heat.

Determined to end his poverty, enraged by his pitiful social security check, he scanned his list and drove to the next restaurant, where he met the same reaction from amused owners and chefs who were surprised by his audacity in trying to sell them something they already had in abundance: chicken recipes.

Finally, one restaurant owner, chose to indulge the gentleman and try out HIS recipe.

From that moment on the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken became THE recipe and the obscure retiree, Colonel Harland Sanders, became a cultural icon for those who like southern fried chicken.

Comments:

From this flashback, where the Colonel went from rags to riches we can discern an obvious success principle, which you've probably already guessed, but I want to cover one more quick flashback before I talk about what is behind that principle.

Flashback 2:

This inventor was known for his desire to never give up. His story is now the very fabric of most self-improvement literature.

Thomas Edison is famous for his persistence in discovering 10,000 ways that the electric light bulb did not work?until he found the one way that did work and literally lit up the world with this momentous discovery.

Comments:

Obviously both the chef and the inventor realized that persistence is the essential ingredient to success because it is to success what carbon is to steel.

Insight:

What is the psychological mechanism that makes persistence possible in the first place?

It's vision fueled by burning desire.

The more the chef and the inventor failed, the more their desire burned a brighter and clearer vision.

This, my friend, is the epitome of all success.

All your dreams are possible for you if you will only feel them strongly enough, envision them clearly enough, and act on them persistently enough.

The psychic force of these three elements combined is irresistible. Embrace them and you will BE unstoppable, the very incarnation of a force of nature.